Bible Topics

I think I have the key to the biblical notion of God. The special name is "Yahweh" which means "He who caused to be." It is similar to Rumpole of the Bailey and his name for his wife: "She who must be obeyed." The Jews had no notion of who God is. They were convinced there was only one rather than multitude of gods as the other religions had. He was seen as a "surrounding presence" as is an earthly Father or Mother. Long after the parent is gone or separated from the child by distance, the child senses parental presence and acts accordingly. The child complies, rebels or modifies the standards.

I have hashed and re-hashed that idea of god as "surrounding presence." I remember using the term in my classes before but never with the significance it has for me now. The Bible does not present and define notion of a "person" deity. That was the gist of the fertility cults. Their followers manufactured these deities to suit their purposes and justify their ideas, actions and superstitions.

The Biblical notion is to look at the order and greatness of the universe as the Hebrews saw it and say "there has to be a plan." With our deeper probing of the world around us and the advances in scientific technology in the last few decades, the biblical notion would be ever stronger. There has to be a plan and a planner. This interrelated set of laws could not have just happened.

The notion of "Father" was the most natural to develop. Each of the writings of the OT presents this "Father" from different viewpoints. However, when they talked about after-life, they referred to going to rest "in the bosom of Abraham." Only with 2 Maccabees in the last century BC do we get a more developed notion. Then the whole picture of the NT is how to react as a true child of the family. The entire theme is the Brotherhood of Man in the Fatherhood of God. It's up to people to remove the ills of the world by their interaction and cooperation.

This Surrounding Presence will revolutionize the whole picture, especially the Gospels. Luke, as usual, hits the nail on the head in the Temple scene at age 12. The whole plan and purpose of Christ's life is summarized as "caring for my father's business." I think a lot of the details of those infancy stories are all imaginary or taken from the OT. They are like the Preface written after the book is written.

I have been toying with the introductory ideas in the Gospels in my head. Mark has no introduction. He starts in medias res with John Baptist. Luke has all the stories about the "Holy Breath" of the 2nd Adam in contrast to the "tainted breath" of the 1st Adam.

Matthew describes the origins of the real Kingship. John goes a step farther. He goes back to the Creative Word which we could see in everything that existed except the human race. People had never cooperated enough to manifest the Word in its fulness. Finally, Christ comes with his perfect cooperation and we see what the Creative Word can really do.

Christ's plan is simple. People have to help and work with each other. They do not need a new society. They had only to work with each other and help each other in all the problems and difficulties of daily life. Then the ills and evils of human society will be removed. The evils of castes, segregations, and domineering will be removed by a true Brotherhood in the Fatherhood of God. This is the "Word made flesh" to continue until the work is complete "tetelestai." (Greek)

The purpose of the OT stories is to show how the events in the lives of the Israelites show they should develop a true spirit of cooperation, love and brotherhood in this surrounding presence of the Father. The prophets were men who felt morally bound to bring the people in line but never really succeeded.

Jesus and John the Baptist discussed these ideas constantly. They were truly gifted kids who felt an obligation to do something about the problem. John the Baptist spoke out openly and drew down the wrath of Herodias who got his head to roll. Jesus was bolstered up by the open reception his ideas received from the people. However, he knew his days were numbered and he was scared.

The judgment scene at the end of the Matthew Gospel is the best picture of the whole idea. "Come, beloved of my Father! Enter into the Kinship (or be kinged) as intended from the beginning. For I was hungry, etc." The judgment scene is exactly like the checker game. Death is the moment when a person reaches the other end of the board. Then he/she is "kinged" and can enjoy happiness forever. Each move on the board was an action of daily life.

Chapter 13 of Matthew is the full description of this "kinging."

I have all my ideas written down. Their value will grow in the next 10–20 years because there is a wave of interest in Christian principles and Bible study. My picture makes Christ a man of his times who sees a need for reform and sets about doing it. The fact that the Gospels are the actual product of the 2nd to 4th generation followers shows how the ideas were lived in difficult circumstances.

Jesus escaped from his suffering and death on several occasions. Finally, he decided there was no escape so he let himself be taken.

The fact that Christ decided his was a "sacrificial" death was his own idea. The Jewish teachers of the time were not expecting such a Messiah. Their Messiah was going to be a conquering hero, a new Joshua who would smite the Romans left and right.

A desert locust or grasshopper of biblical infamy is one of the plagues of Egypt. A large swarm can consume 20,000 tons of grain and vegetation in one day in their migratory flights. We did not have the locusts in Kansas in the 30's but we certainly had their next of kin. Today, they are destroyed by airplanes who dust in front of them.

Jesus Christ was a gifted young man who saw clearly where the world should be headed. He and his cousin talked about these ideas for years. Then both of them felt the inner drive to do something. Luke stressed that Christ was always afraid of the end result.

Luke was a gentle person who could easily offer sympathy to anyone. He was a companion of Paul in his worst days. He edited all the letters of Paul and this was his 3rd work that the early church writers talked about. He is responsible for 1 Cor. 13 — the description of human love. He added it to the letter of Paul because Paul had been so downright mean in the first part of the letter. Paul tells us explicitly that Luke wrote some of the letters as he dictated them. Then Paul added a note in his own hand.

The first Christian community had the whole gamut of human beings exactly as we do today. Even after 20 centuries of so-called Christian living, we are not much closer to the ideal than they were in the first century. It is not the fault of the ideals, principles or plans. It is the fact that we still have not lived them. Christ centered his teaching in our relations to each other. It was not ritual or parade or pomp of any kind. Just day-to-day living and working together.

I like the way I developed all five of the Johannine writings. Each time I read the summary of the Apocalypse, I visualize the Old Roman forum, the Palace of the Caesars, the Circus Maximus and the Coliseum. This area was in its heyday at the time John wrote the Apocalypse. He wrote it to encourage the Christians being persecuted in these places for the entertainment of Caesar's guests.

It's amazing that we make such a big to-do about the Jewish Holocaust and overlook the identical event from 60–313 AD. It was the Roman government instead of the Nazi group who was in charge. The Christians were stuffed into the "prisons" which are still extant and killed as the "worst kind of Jew." Rome did their killings in order to purge the world of the "Jews" and to establish the "pure" Roman race.

The Trastevere section of Rome is still inhabited by the "down and outers" exactly as it was by Jews and Christians in the Roman period. History doesn't change much — the same events with different actors in a different place.

The feminist movement will have lots of grist for the mill in many OT writers and in Paul in the NT. Christ amazed the Apostles in his attitude toward women because he considered them fully human.

As I read through the women of the Bible, I get an even better view of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Mark does not stress her role at all. This was the earliest approach. Then Luke presents her as the excellent teacher of Jesus in those first 12 years. He develops his picture as the new Hannah, Mother of Samuel. Matthew stresses the Queen-Mother role in the Kingship of the Father. John makes the whole picture revolve around the new Eve with the new Adam.

Every age, every country, every culture has its heroes, heroines and villains. Today, heroes develop quickly, last a short time and are replaced by new ones. Our heroes and heroines are displayed on products, in papers and magazines, on radio and television and in movies. Through books we reach to the big heroes of the past.

Among the Israelites or Jews, the only medium was the Bible. These were kept only in synagogues and the Temple. The stories were read, memorized and retold by parents to children. This teaching was primarily the work of the mother in the first 12 years. At age 12, the boys were tested in the Bar Mitzvah to see whether they could pass over into adult Jewish life. Then the father took over to prepare his son for a trade.

Girls were not neglected. There was a regular testing at age 12 but the girls were to use their knowledge as mothers. The girls were called the "Bat Mitzvah" or "daughter of the Law."

The whole story of the Chosen people was developed around the men and women of the past. Some were fictional, some were for real. The good and the bad were included to make clear the personal choices that had to be made.

These stories were all of the Semitic mentality. The writers were interested not so much in "what" happened as "why" it happened. If facts didn't accomplish this goal, the facts were changed and retold.

As I reviewed John, it dawned on me that the so-called words of "institution" from the Last Supper are not found in John's account at all. Yet he has five full chapters, 13–17, describing the conversation and teaching of Jesus at that last meal. If this statement of Christ was so meaningful why was it omitted from John entirely?

Today, I wrote on the Letters of John and the Apocalypse. Three notions stand out about John. He was only 13 or 14 years old when called by Christ. He was a favorite and well liked by all the Apostles. Christ publicly called John a "Boanerges" or "son of Thunder." He lived to about 100 AD and saw 3 full generations of Christian living.

Each time I think about the age of the Apostles, I get a whole new wave of understanding of the NT story. You asked how the Apostles supported themselves. There are two indications. They continued to do fishing but Paul and Peter both state that the Apostle has a right to expect his livelihood from his work. They probably followed the practice of the Prophets and the teachers in the last century B.C. They were fed by various people with whom they worked.

I like what the NT tells us about this after-life in the Gospels. Jesus was the same person. He had the same body even to the points of scars or eating. Yet he was totally different and was going to full union with those who had gone before.

The first time the Israelites tried to piece a story of their nation together was in the 10th century B.C. Solomon and his court were in their quest for wisdom. They had at least four different traditions, perhaps as many as ten, to pick and choose from. From the 10th to the 1st century B.C. the OT story was written and rewritten until we get its final form. The New Testament has the same kind of editorial history except it is much shorter.

As I worked on the Introduction to the Gospels, I came up with a format that ties them all together. Mark has nothing about the early life of Jesus. Paul has nothing in his letters. So the first writings went strictly with the public years and work of Christ.

Then Luke asked Mary for some of her recollections of those first days and we get his account. Matthew wanted to lay the groundwork for the Kingship of Christ. He "rigs" the genealogy so that it says "David" 4 times. He parallels the story very close to that of Abraham, Moses and the chosen people in Egypt. John is interested in showing the new creation, the second Adam and the second Eve, Jesus and Mary. He develops the 7 weeks of the new creation (parallel to 7 days of creation) and then writes a prologue to introduce it.

My head has been swimming with ideas on the Intro to the Gospels last night. I went to sleep with this jumble and woke up trying to sort out all the pieces. The first Christians, as is clear from Paul and Mark, did not even talk of the childhood or youth of Jesus. They took him in his public life where he was first known and considered how they could develop the ideals he had set.

The societal state of the Roman world and its functions have to be kept clearly in mind. Unless a person was a "Roman citizen" he had no rights. The upper crust of society represented about 3% of the people. They spent their days and nights between the Circus Maximus and the Coliseum. They were given lodging in the huge palace of the Caesars if they were from out of town. The peasants were to be content with the "cibus et circus." The Roman army was constantly occupied with conquest and maintenance of the Empire. The system of roads, laws, and standards of measurement were firmly established by the Romans. Their system of taxation was the steepest ever decreed.

Into this world came two young men, John and Jesus. Both were Jews and both were convinced they should do their part to resurrect and fulfill the ideals of their forefathers.

The key point of the Jewish message was Daniel — again, a young boy who did wonders in the reign of an oppressor worse than the Caesar. From Daniel came several ideas — including the title "Son of Man" which Jesus took for himself. Daniel was almost a fatalist — it was "do or die." The mission of the Jewish people had to be fulfilled or be lost.

I worked on the Intro to the Gospels. I don't want the concordance approach because that puts all four accounts together like a pot of mush. Yet, I do want a comparison to emphasize the individuality and richness of each account.

I am puzzled by the names of the 3 angels mentioned in the OT. All of them are from the last couple of centuries B.C. The prophets of the same period all have the name "Yahweh" in one form or another. Micha-el, Rapha-el — all have the abbreviated name of "Elohim," the generic "deity." I'll have to see if anyone has mentioned this idea.